An alternative science

The sociology of health and illness provokes
something in Dr Caragh Brosnan, lecturer in Health Sociology in the School of
Humanities and Social Science.

It sparks an
unfathomable curiosity in health care and its value to society, but more
fundamentally, the moral and principled human decisions that lie behind the
science that governs our health and wellbeing.

She probes,
enquires and delves deep to uncover questions like: what are the values and
ethics that underpin our health care practices? What historical, social, and
political factors have shaped our medical knowledge and medical education? How
do everyday experiences at work interact with health professionals’ moral
standpoints?

Ultimately, Caragh
is concerned with how different kinds of
knowledge come to be valued in health care and what the implications of this
are.

Previously calling
the United Kingdom home for 10 years, Caragh completed her PhD at Cambridge University
in 2008. Her research focused on debates
over medical curricula by comparing staff and students’ experiences at two
different medical schools. This study showed that differences in curricula
could be mapped onto other differences between medical schools, such as levels
of funding, prestige and student demographics. Debates over medical curricula
therefore needed to be understood as being shaped by schools’ relationships to
each other.

In a postdoctoral
project at King’s College London, Caragh examined how ethics manifested in a
range of neuroscience disciplines.

“I found that scientists were not
really aware of bioethics. Ethics for them meant going through the ethics
committee, getting approval, and not thinking too much beyond that. At the same
time, the kind of moral reasoning they actually drew on in their day-to-day
work was not thought of as a form of ethics,” she said.

In 2012, Caragh joined the team at the
University of Newcastle and has since been teaching into courses in Sociology
and Nursing including Health Sociology; Substance Abuse and Social
Disadvantage; and Complementary Therapies in Healthcare.

Her intrigue in complementary therapies
has been supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC). Caragh was awarded
the highly competitive ARC Discovery
Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) last year to conduct a comparative study in Australia
and the United Kingdom on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) university degrees; specifically focusing on
chiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine and osteopathy.

Caragh is asking how
what is taught in CAM university degrees reflects the status of the CAM
professions. This question stems from her fascination with the social factors
that shape how health professionals get trained. She explains that because
these CAM courses now exist within universities, there is a general assumption that this translates into increased professional status in the medical field. To date, there is no
study of what determines the actual content of these courses.

She is
researching how scholars of these fields go about maintaining their difference
from other health practitioners, amid pressure to prove they have a place
alongside them in the university. “I want to know how these CAM programs retain
their specific bodies of knowledge, which historically have been considered
authentic and alternative to mainstream disciplines, while meeting the
standards and particular quality outcomes applied to other health professional degrees.”

“These CAM
programs pride themselves on offering a different approach to conventional
healthcare but I want to know how that is sustained and taught in the
university environment and how it differs across chiropractic, traditional Chinese
medicine and osteopathy.”

She asks: “By
teaching these courses at university, are they losing their claim to be
alternative? What forms does alternative medicine take within a university? More
broadly, what kinds of knowledge are seen as legitimate in the university?”

This grant will
aid Caragh as she unearths some big questions that underlie our health system
and will help inform the medical sector, the health education field and health
professionals as innovation and technology takes health care to new strengths.

Caragh was
recently the recipient of a new staff grant, which took her to Buenos Aires in
2012 to the International Sociological Association Forum where she presented a
paper on her post-doctoral research.

This ARC grant
however, takes the prize. “To be funded to do what really motivates me is just
wonderful. The next three years will be spent conducting my comparative study
here in Australia and in the United Kingdom, collecting and presenting data for
publication as well as attending a range of international conferences to
discuss and network with other professionals on the topic.”

Career Summary

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Health Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Science. I completed my PhD in the sociology of medical education at the University of Cambridge in 2008 and then held research and teaching posts at Keele University, King's College London and Brunel University before joining the University of Newcastle in 2012.

My research focuses broadly on understanding how different kinds of knowledge come to be valued in scientific and health professional practice and education. I have explored these issues in various contexts, including in medical education, neuroscience, bioethics and complementary and alternative medicine. Much of my work draws on Pierre Bourdieu to theorise the relationship between legitimate knowledge and power.

My current research is funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) (2014-2016) (Project title: Complementary and alternative medicine degrees: new configurations of knowledge, professional autonomy and the university). This study asks how what is taught in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) degrees reflects the professional status of CAM, and at the same time sets out to examine the broader relationship between professions and the university. Data collection is taking place in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Research ExpertiseI am a sociologist whose main areas of interest include health care, science, the professions and higher education. I welcome enquiries from postgraduate students seeking supervision on any of these topics.

Qualifications

PhD (Sociology), University of Cambridge - UK

Bachelor of Arts, University of Queensland

Bachelor of Arts (Honours), University of Queensland

Keywords

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Health sociology

Medical Education

Primary health care

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methods

Science and Technology Studies

Social disadvantage and drug use

Sociology of Health and Illness

Fields of Research

Code

Description

Percentage

160899

Sociology not elsewhere classified

100

Professional Experience

UON Appointment

Title

Organisation / Department

Senior Lecturer

University of NewcastleSchool of Humanities and Social ScienceAustralia

This article attends to the processes through which neuroscience and the neuro are enacted in a specific context: a translational neuroscience research group that was the setting ... [more]

This article attends to the processes through which neuroscience and the neuro are enacted in a specific context: a translational neuroscience research group that was the setting of an ethnographic study. The article therefore provides a close-up perspective on the intersection of neuroscience and translational research. In the scientific setting we studied, the neuro was multiple and irreducible to any particular entity or set of practices across a laboratory and clinical divide. Despite this multiplicity, the groupÂ¿s work was held together through the Â¿promise of porosityÂ¿ Â¿ that one day there would be translation of lab findings into clinically effective intervention. This promise was embodied in the figure of the Group Leader whose expertise spanned clinical and basic neurosciences. This is theorized in terms of a contrast between cohesion and adhesion in interdisciplinary groupings. We end by speculating on the role of Â¿vivificationÂ¿ Â¿ in our case mediated by the Group Leader Â¿ in rendering Â¿aliveÂ¿ the expectations of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Samuel G, Brosnan CJ, 'Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's disease: a critique of principlism as a framework for the ethical analysis of the decision-making process', American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, 2 20-22 (2011) [C1]

Brosnan CJ, ''Quackery' in the academy? The debate over the teaching of complementary and alternative medicine in Australian universities', TASA 2012 Conference: Emerging and Enduring Inequalities Abstracts, Brisbane (2012) [E3]

2012

Brosnan CJ, 'Investigating the 'neuro' in neuroethics: The implications for neuroethics of the multiplicity of neuroscience and the brain', The Second ISA Forum of Sociology: Social Justice & Democratization Book of Abstracts, Buenos Aires (2012) [E3]

Research Supervision

Current Supervision

Commenced

Research Title / Program / Supervisor Type

2014

Women's Stories and What They Tell About Indigenous Health Behaviours: An Exploration Into Stories About Pluralistic Healthcare PracticesStudies In Human Society, Faculty of Education and ArtsCo-Supervisor

2008

When Power Networks Collide: Using Actor Networks Theory to Analyse Community Consultation Undertaken for an Australian Town's Electricity SupplyStudies In Human Society, Faculty of Education and ArtsCo-Supervisor